tapu

Yasmin slammed the dishwasher shut, shaking the pots and pans. "Money's on the table, give Connor his bottle at 7, blah blah blah." #FF0000 ">[Funny I think this miiiight work better if you were writing in first person, though]

Jessie stared around Ellie's head at the TV. "Uh-huh."

"And don't let Ellie stay up late again. There's chocolate-fudge something in the freezer for people who do their homework," Yasmin warned, ruffling Ellie's hair and dropping a kiss on her forehead.

Eight o' clock isn't late, Jessie thought, and Shut up while I'm watching Select Live.

Yasmin kissed Connor next. "Hey, you alright, love?"

"I'm fine," Jessie answered. Not that that meant much, these days. #FF0000 ">[She sounds depressed. This is my second time going through the story, so now I have the benefit of fore-sight. She never seems depressed in any other part of the story. Or did you mean something else? It is unclear to me]

Yasmin wrapped a thin arm around Jessie's shoulder's and squeezed lightly, then kissed her cheek. 'My good girl," she said fondly, and left.

Two minutes of perving on Drew Neemia. #FF0000 ">[perving?] Wasted, Jessie thought.

Her mother had left a ghost of her scent in the air. Pantene and Loreal and manuka honey hand cream. #FF0000 ">[I'm not sure what purpose this line serves, but for me I got the symbolism of a fusion between the native Maoris and the Europeans (two brand names and then a local balm). You mention something like this later, so I only got this reference after reading through the story a second time. If this wasn't what you were shooting for, then I'd suggest you cut this line. Or did you try to foreshadow something by using the word "ghost"?]

***


It was not quite summer but not still winter, the sun hot enough to burn but the evenings cold enough to raise goosebumps. #FF0000 ">[Where I'm from, we call this "autumn" ] Jessie pulled on blue jeggings #FF0000 ">[jeggings?] and brown Ugg boots and a loose pink singlet. #FF0000 ">[singlet? I only know of singlets as the thing that wrestlers wear. Are we talking about the same singlet?] [oh, wait, I looked it up on Wikipedia, it says it's an Australian / NZ term for a "sleeveless shirt". Right]

Ellie was still sitting in front of the TV, even though Jessie had switched to 3 News. Nothing particularly interesting, just more about the Christchurch earthquake. #FF0000 ">[No anti-religion stab this time? ] Jessie opened up Connor's pushchair and picked him up off the couch, burying her nose in his soft baby hair, inhaling his milky powdery smell. #FF0000 ">[Not sure how a person can smell like milky powder, unless they've recently dumped a package of the stuff over them]

"Little brown boy," she said, strapping him in. He stared up at her with his big brown quarter-Maori eyes.

"Ellie!"

Her sister reluctantly turned away from Samantha Hayes. "Put your jersey on, girlie."

Ellie pulled her pink hoodie out from under her arse and slid her arms in. Jessie got the money off the table and the keys off the kitchen bench. Ellie slipped her soft six-year-old hand into Jessie's dry sixteen-year-old one. "Come on, bubs."

#FF0000 ">[OK, so far I'm a tad confused by the mind-numbing mass of names here. Ellie and Jessie, I take it, are sisters. Connor is the baby brother, then. Who's Samantha Hayes? A television personality? You'll have to excuse me, I live under a rock when it comes to television]

***


They met Caitlin halfway.

"Heyyyyy," Caitlin cried, #FF0000 ">squeezing Jessie almost in two almost squeezing Jessie in two. "Aren't you cold?"

"A bit, yeah," Jessie shivered, but Caitlin had already bent down to greet Ellie. "Heyy chickie, how's school going for you?"

Ellie smiled quickly and buried her face in Jessie's waist. "Don't be shy, you bum. It's Caitlin! You know her."

"Don't think she does," Caitlin frowned, straightening. "She's only met me once-remember when I came to your house?"

"With the marshmallows?" They both laughed. Suddenly Caitlin frowned and grabbed Jessie's arm. "Jesus you're white!"

"I know," Jessie groaned. "Mum should've dated more Maoris, then I'd already be brown!"

Caitlin laughed. "Don't think that's very-what's the word?-PC." #FF0000 ">[PC?]

"Yeah, that's the word... Hey, I gotta get to the shop, hun, we're getting hot chips."

"I'll come with you. I was gonna grab some better shoes but it can wait-here, let me push that."

"Thanks." They resumed walking. "So you're going to get takeaways in fluffy jandals? Classy," Jessie snickered.

"Shut up! I like my jandals."

"Hori," #FF0000 ">[Hori?] Jessie laughed. "Hey, you finished that maths homework."

"No," Caitlin replied, giving Jessie an are-you-fucking-mental look. #FF0000 ">[The cuss kind of hit me in the face. If it were me, I'd save the cussing until a really important point, where it will actually serve purpose. Here, it's a tad redundant]

"Me neither. I keep forgetting how to find the circumference of a circle."

"It's pi times... something. I dunno."

"Mmmmm. Pi!" Jessie said in her best Homer Simpson voice.

Caitlin grinned as she bumped the takeaway shop door open with her hip and pulled the pushchair in. Jessie and Ellie followed and took deep breaths of hot, salty, greasy, delicious smelling air.

Yasmin #FF0000 ">[As far as I understand, Yasmin is Jessie + Ellie's mom. I would actually avoid calling her by name at all - when you call her by name, it kind of clashes with the way you sort of write from Jessie's perspective. I'd just call her "Jessie's mom" or "her mom" until someone actually addresses her as "Yasmin" if you absolutely must reveal her name] grinned at them from behind the counter. "Got your order, love," she yelled over the sound of the customers and employees and deep-fat fryers, passing Jessie a newspaper-wrapped package. "Hey Caitlin, you here to order?"

"Nah, just walking with Jessie. It was nice to see you Miss Ledbury."

"You too, love." Yasmin's smiling face followed them out the door into the cool main street.

Jessie elbowed Caitlin. "Suck up."

"What?"

"'It was very very ever so nice to see you, Miss Ledbury.'"

"Just being polite," Caitlin shrugged. "Hey I gotta get home, I'll see you at school on Monday, kay?"

"Um, yeah..."

"Bye."

Jessie watched Caitlin walk away, hoping she hadn't pissed her off. #FF0000 ">[Is there a reason for Caitlin to be sucking up to Jessie's mother? Is she the mayor of the town or something? Right now it almost seems like a non-sequitur]

***


They'd met Caitlin just past the Maori graveyard. When they reached that spot on the way back, Connor began to grizzle. Jessie kicked the brakes down and bent down beside him. "What's up, bubby?"

The sun had just set and the street was almost silent. There were no cars or birds or music. Just Connor's sniffles and a faint echo of laughter.

Jessie raised her head and gazed across the low brick wall. Past the modern gravestones, most bearing familiar names, across another brick wall, was the Ancestors Cemetery. Maori were buried there, fierce tribes-peoples from the local iwi, graves dating back years before the Europeans arrived. It was forbidden-tapu. But at the far end of the graveyard, by the second wall, beneath the trailing branches of a smallish weeping willow, were two small flickering shapes.

Jessie straightened, took Ellie's hand and the pushchair handle, and walked inside. #FF0000 ">[Inside where? The graveyard? I'm not sure that "inside" really fits for a place that doesn't really have an interior]

Tyrone Ropiha was standing beneath the tree, making a face at Sarah Ropiha. #FF0000 ">[This sounds forced, probably because you reveal their last names like this. Perhaps "Tyrone... making a face at his sister"?] "Can't catch me, can't catch me!" he laughed.

His younger sister looked terrified. It had probably taken all her courage just to walk this far in. "T, come on, we shouldn't be here," she whispered.

"Can't catch me, the ghosts are gonna catch me first!" T yelled, stretching and waving his arms like a windmill. Or a demented scarecrow.

Jessie watched, feeling awkward and nervous and shy. T was twelve, still baby-faced like most Polynesian boy-children were. Sarah was ten, and shitting herself. #FF0000 ">[Again, not a place where I'd use a cuss. It doesn't really reinforce anything, and just makes the writer sound filthy-mouthed ]

"Just come back!" she called, her voice high and beseeching. "We're not supposed to be here!"

"Coz it's tapu?" T snorted. "No such thing."

Jessie felt slightly sick as watched this, her head spinning with everything she'd ever heard about makutu and tapu and urupa and everything. She'd never really believed in that shit, just like she'd never believed in God or Jesus or any other heroes in the sky, but it still felt... disrespectful, standing in the final resting place of people who had believed in all that and mocking them for all the world to hear. And fuck it was cold. #FF0000 ">[This is more like it. Jessie's getting nervous, so using curse words here (as opposed to earlier in the story) reinforces the feeling of urgency, that something is very, very wrong]

"What about you?" T called. Jessie jumped as she realised he was talking to her. "You gonna stop me?"

"You two should get home," she said instead of answering. "S'getting cold."

"Nah!" he yelled, then turned and jumped and ran. Over the brick wall, down towards the wire fence separating the bush from the graves.

"Stubborn little shit," Jessie muttered. Goosebumps were popping up all over her arms. There was weird feeling uncoiling in her body. Like she was standing too close to a whirlpool, about to be sucked in. #FF0000 ">[I'd like to see more concrete description here. Just telling me that it's "weird" doesn't make me think it's weird, and the analogy you provide is a bit vague. For example: "I heard weird music, like aliens playing on an alien piano" is not weird. "I knew there was music, but I heard no sound, yet I could clearly distinguish the notes" is weird] "Ellie, you stay here, you understand?" She waited till Ellie nodded then strode after T, Sarah trailing behind her.

T was standing by the fence, laughing his skinny little arse off. Jessie leaned over the fence and called out to him, "Get your butt back here, you hear me? It's sacred! Don't you know what tapu means?"

T flipped his middle finger and laughed.

"Well you might not know what tapu means but d'you know what's gonna happen when I tell your gran?"

T laughed again, but this time it came out shaky.

"You're gonna get a hiding," Sarah laughed.

"Fcku," T muttered. #FF0000 ">[I only realized this was not a misspelling after I re-read this part and the parts following it. I suggest revising this]

Jessie cupped a hand behind her ear. "Whawassat?"

"Fuck you!" T yelled.

"That's not very nice," Jessie scolded, secretly enjoying herself. "You come back here and go home with your sister and we won't tell anyone, okay?"

"We won't?" Sarah asked.

Jessie choked back a laugh. "No, we won't," she said firmly. "Come on, T!"

T walked back slowly. Most of the light had gone now, and the cemetery had just become twice as creepy. Behind she could hear Ellie whimpering. "Hurry up," she muttered under her breath.

Suddenly T burst into a sprint. Jessie jumped out of the way as he hurtled over the fence and kept running. Sarah followed him with a plaintive, "Wait for me!"

Jessie watched them go, then grabbed the pushchair and Ellie's hand and walked home.

By the time they got there, the fish and chips were cold.